** All students listed here are from the UvA, unless otherwise indicated.

Steps for starting and completing your thesis

(1) Email me to schedule an appointment to chat. During this chat, I will explain the guidelines and expectations. Generally, I will expect at least 2 full rough drafts of your thesis, as well as a final draft. Keep in mind that I require at least two weeks between the 1st and 2nd draft, and then at least two weeks between the 2nd and final draft.

Before meeting to chat, I usually require students to read Chapters 7-9 of "The Craft of Research" by Booth et al. Please download or print those chapters from here.(2) Complete your thesis. A few remarks:

Besides the lessons learned from the Booth et al. chapters, usually the major flaws in drafts stem from two shortcomings. First, there are no transitions between paragraphs. And second, I start getting lost regarding why I'm reading what I'm reading (even within a paragraph). An important task before submitting a draft is to eliminate any occurrence of these two shortcomings.

Please note that the administration runs an automated software-driven plagiarism check on the final draft when you submit it. If you are found to be plagiarizing, the consequences can be dire and dramatic. Please be careful.

Unless my feedback is very general due to current shortcomings of the most recent draft, you can expect rigorous feedback and a preliminary score after each of your first two drafts. When receiving my feedback, if I ask a question within my remarks, generally I am looking for at least a paragraph of adjustments (not only one sentence).

(3) If you are not writing a Master's thesis, please skip to Step #4. If you are writing a Master's thesis, please continue reading here: In addition to receiving me as a supervisor, you will also be assigned a 2nd reader. The 2nd reader may request adjustments to your thesis, either in order to pass the thesis, or because s/he believes that the cost/benefit ratio of making adjustments is in your best interest. In such cases, you must then complete the following steps--

Please follow the 2nd reader's feedback, according to the following procedure.

(a) Take your .doc file, and turn on “Tracking.” Click on “Review” and turn on “Track changes.” When you make your corrections, they will show up on your .doc file as colored text.

(b) Please make the corrections on the .doc file, with tracking on. When you are done making your corrections, save this tracked file (i.e. “with_tracking.doc”).

(c) Then, save this file with another file name (i.e. “tracking_accepted.doc”) and click “Review” -> “Accept” -> “Accept all changes in document.” Then save this file.

(d) So, you will have two files to send to the 2nd reader.

(e) Please reply to the 2nd reader's email, and below each of the comments, in red text, explain how you addressed each concern in the paper. It is not a bad idea to cite the page numbers where you made the changes.

(f) Please attach the two files on the email and send.

Before you start Step #3e, you are welcome to stop by my office and we can chat about the changes that you have made.(4) Submit your final draft to me. After your final draft has been completed and submitted, please ensure that I have submitted the thesis evaluation form to theses-feb@uva.nl (updated January 2014). Since 2010, the Bachelor's thesis for General Economics is worth 12 EC's, and the Master's thesis in Economics is worth 15 EC's.